Gabby Hicks headed to SMU for volleyball

SANDPOINT — With COVID-19 restrictions and the uncertainty of the past year, the recruiting process for high school athletes around the country has been interesting to say the least.

Sandpoint senior Gabby Hicks experienced that chaos firsthand as she tried to find a home to continue her volleyball career.

At times, Hicks questioned whether she would even get a chance to play at the next level due to all the challenges. But at the last second, the perfect opportunity arose.

Recently while playing in her final qualifier tournament for her club team in Coeur d'Alene, a member of the Southern Methodist University coaching staff noticed her. They talked, Hicks spoke with the head coach and about a week later they extended her a preferred walk-on offer to SMU, a Division I school in Dallas, Texas.

It happened so fast that Hicks didn't have much time to decide. Just two days before the May 1 deadline, Hicks verbally committed and then signed her National Letter of Intent.

On Wednesday, Hicks celebrated her commitment to become a Mustang and reflected on a stressful recruiting process filled with its fair share of ups and downs.

"It was kind of crazy that the one school I never emailed was the school I ended up going to," she said.

Prior to the opportunity from SMU, Hicks was in contact with a handful of other schools and visited several, but she was unable to talk face-to-face with any of the coaches and players due to pandemic restrictions. The campuses were also locked down, and for the most part, silent, which made envisioning the right fit for her extremely difficult.

"It's really hard to walk on a campus with nobody on it, and be like, 'Oh, I can see myself going here,'" she said.

Hicks had her sights set on attending California State University, Monterey Bay, and playing at a Division II school like her older sister, Grace Hicks, who is currently at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.

But then the Mustangs entered the picture and Hicks knew she couldn't turn down an opportunity to go Division I. Plus, SMU had everything she was looking for. It was the perfect storm.

"I'm really excited because Southern Methodist is a really great academic school as well, so it kind of checks all of my boxes," she said.

Over the course of the last year, Hicks said her game has gotten a lot stronger and it showed on the court this past fall for the Bulldogs. At outside hitter, she led the team with 207 kills and 29 aces and finished second on the squad in blocks and digs. She earned all-league honors for the second straight season and was named the team MVP.

Entering the 2020 season, Hicks said all the colleges she was talking to prior to the pandemic stopped reaching out due in large part to the uncertainty with the players already on their rosters. That turned her recruiting into a long, grueling process, but she stuck with it.

Hicks has already received a workout packet from SMU and has been training five days a week outside of normal practices to prepare for the step up in competition. She will depart for Dallas in early July and currently plans to study international policy or advertising.

Hicks said it wasn't easy to take a leap of faith and attend SMU, but she knows she made the right decision.

"It was a choice between if I really wanted to push myself and become a better player and student or stay more in my comfort zone," she said. "In the end, it was like I had to go to Southern Methodist to get out of my comfort zone and grow. That was really the deciding factor."